The present invention is directed to a method and system for generating power and distributing the power to populated areas where it is needed, and to the use of the method to enable the deployment of a lunar solar power system by means of electric energy from Earth in support of a transportation system between the Earth, space, and the Moon, and also to provide support for operations on the Moon.
It is estimated that, by the year 2050, a prosperous world of 10 billion people will require at least 20 TWe of electric power. Currently, electricity is generated using fuel such as oil, natural gas, nuclear energy, and coal, with a small amount being generated by renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, or hydroelectric facilities. Independent oil companies face increasing hurdles to maintaining access to significant natural reserves of oil and natural gas, due to the geopolitical distribution of such resources. Additionally, the recovered fuel must be transported safely to an electric power-generating facility which is typically remote from the recovery site, and often in a different country. This involves pipelines, ships, tankers and the like. Such transportation is expensive both to install and maintain, and is potentially dangerous as a result of accidents, sabotage or terrorism. Finally, progressive exhaustion of readily accessible fossil fuel resources requires exploration to attempt to find new sources of such fuels. The struggle to locate and develop new sources of gas and oil will increase in difficulty over time, as such resources continue to be depleted by world power demands and population increases. This has resulted in progressively higher prices and shortages in the power supply to the world population, and this problem is expected to become worse with time.
The present invention is related to my prior U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,019,768 and 5,223,781 directed to a Power Collection and Transmission System and Method, and the contents of these patents are incorporated herein by reference. In these patents, the power collection system comprises solar power collecting stations which convert solar power into low intensity beams of microwaves. The microwave beams are directed to a microwave receiver or rectenna that converts the beam into electricity. A rectenna is a field of closely spaced antennas that rectifies microwaves into electricity. U.S. Pat. No. 5,019,768 describes a lunar based solar power system using microwaves to deliver commercial power to the Earth. Such a system is far less environmentally intrusive, much safer, and more dependable than a terrestrial solar power system. Additionally, a solar power collection system on the Moon has the major physical advantage of being able to use orbital mirrors to concentrate sunlight on the solar-to-electric converters, due to the airless and cloudless lunar surface. It is much easier to make very thin mirrors than to make solar-to-electric converters. The latter devices require high purity silicon and other rare materials such as selenium, gallium, tellurium, cadmium, and germanium. The reflectors can concentrate the sunlight so that less area of solar cell is needed per unit of power output.
One potential problem with initial construction of a lunar based solar power collection and transmission system is the cost of deploying the necessary equipment to the Moon and establishing the solar power stations on the Moon.